Corruption ate its way through the entire office-
holding element of the Ottoman state: positions were bought and sold
from the Divan down to the obscure village, and office was held to
exist primarily for financial profit and secondarily as a means of
oppressing the subject people.
The army, on which so much in the Turkish state depended, naturally
reflected the demoralized condition of the government. While Peter the
Great was organizing a powerful army in Russia, and Frederick the Great
was perfecting the Prussian military machine, the Ottoman army steadily
declined. It failed to keep pace with the development of tactics and of
firearms in western Europe, and fell behind the times. The all-
prevalent corruption ruined its discipline, and its regularly organized
portion--the "janissaries"--became the masters rather than the servants
of the sultans and of the whole Turkish government.
It was the fortune of the Russian tsarina--Catherine the Great--to
appreciate the real weakness of both Turkey and Poland and to turn her
neighbors' distress to the profit of her own country.
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